Month: February 2014

“The Big Rich” by Bryan Burrough, published in 2009, is a long ebook that details the lives and times of the four Texas families who became extremely wealthy Americans from the oil business in the first half of the twentieth century. “They… became the country’s first shirt-sleeve billionaires… accumulated every toy of their age…” including lavish residences, private jets, boats, fancy cars and politicians (when they got into politics).

The editing of this book is a bit sloppy in spots. Nevertheless, according to this book, oil was first discovered in Texas in a well that was later named Spindletop in Beaumont, around 1901. The abundant quantity of oil found there caused a price drop that prompted a conversion from coal to oil among railroads and steamship companies. Suddenly, thousands of people sought to get rich quickly from oil, similar to the way people wanted in on the California Gold Rush. The nineteen teens saw a proliferation of automobiles requiring oil.

Read the book to learn all the details about the people, places, politics and peripheral issues (such as professional sports) associated with the oil industry in Texas over the next ten decades.

The Book of the Week is “Milosevic, Portrait of a Tyrant” by Dusko Doder and Louise Branson, published in 1999. This lengthy volume contains the history of the six Slav Republics– Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia– from WWII through the late 1990’s, and the biography of a fascist, supremacist, genocidal terrorist– Slobodan Milosevic. His wife, Mira chimed in at specific moments. They had the usual traits of all tyrannical couples– extreme narcissism, hubris syndrome, refusal to face reality and vengefulness. You can see where this is going, if you’ve read your history. “Western leaders were loath to get involved in the Yugoslav mess.” They got involved insofar as to reap economic benefits and public relations kudos for negotiating peace plans.

Milosevic was born in August 1941 in suburban Belgrade, the capital of both Serbia and Yugoslavia. His parents, at different times, died via suicide. During his decade-long reign, he was an undiplomatic megalomanaical micromanager, pursuing his goals through conspiracy, deception and force. He demanded mindless loyalty, discarding those who worked for him when their assignments were done. There was high turnover among his staff.

After the Communist Marshal Josip Broz Tito, leader of Yugoslavia died in 1980, Milosevic stepped into the power vacuum. Tito had tried to foster the unity of different ethnic groups. To keep the peace, he allowed them to freely practice their religions. Serb nationalists didn’t like that. They wanted to be dominant.

In the early 1980’s, Milosevic was appointed Communist Chief of Belgrade by his friend, whose family was party-entrenched into the 1980’s. Then in January 1986, he was promoted to Communist party chief of Serbia. His friend became president of Serbia. Milosevic was largely responsible for installing his cronies to strictly enforce Marxism.

Different ethnic groups hated each other. For instance, the Albanians were sworn enemies of the Serbians and the Turks. Milosevic deviously was able to convince each side that he agreed with them. He used a divide and conquer strategy in addressing them, sowing seeds of hatred among them. He would eventually betray his aforementioned friend. Since he didn’t control the army or the police, all he could do was spread propaganda and incite crowds.

Milosevic had the newspaper Politika secretly launch propaganda attacks on his political enemies. He also secured the support of military and party chiefs. Only two groups opposed his usurping of power: the Communist Albanians and his wife’s father’s old-line Communist politicians. Milosevic’s wife disowned her father for that. His secret enemies also included ethnic Albanians, Bosnians, Muslims and Croats. He pushed for Serb nationalism, regardless of whether different ethnic groups supported Communism.

By the fall of 1989, Milosevic had seized political control of Kosovo and a part of Serbia with a high Hungarian population, and Montenegro too. In 1990, he rigged the presidential election for himself, with 53 parties as candidates for Parliament, most run by his operatives.

In spring 1991, there was serious opposition to Milosevic’s desire to take over all of Yugoslavia. In March, he and the dictator of Croatia met secretly to plan how to carve it up. In June 1991, he had no objection to Slovenia’s secession from Yugoslavia because it had virtually no Serb citizens. Croatia, also mostly Catholic, followed suit with its own secession. The Serb dictator had previously been able to eliminate democratic leaders through arrests, intimidation or corruption. Both he and the Croatian dictator incited violence and hatred against the peoples of other Balkan territories.

The Bosnian leader knew his nation was doomed because he saw how ruthless the Serb and Croat dictators were. Bosnia was 44% Muslim, 31% Serb and 17% Croat. By summer 1991, the Serbs were warring against the Croatians. It was mostly independent military groups and not the Yugoslav army. The Serb men who had been drafted didn’t even want to fight. Men were forced to fight against their will. “The regime vigorously suppressed all news about malcontents and desertions. There were political killings of dissenters by the police and paramilitary members.”

A rumor had it that there were 83 different armed groups in Bosnia, some mercenaries, in the secret pay of Milosevic. A group would go to a village and do ethnic cleansing of Muslims. The Croatian army did this too, demolishing mosques in Bosnia. The Serb dictator denied the existence of the paramilitary groups. There was lots of looting. He was careful to act as though he delegated authority for people on his staff so it would appear that he had less power than he actually had. He left no paper trail.

In autumn of 1991, Milosevic insisted that the nationalists and not the republics were the legitimate constituent units of the Yugoslav Federation. In January 1992, the Bosnian Serbs proclaimed their own republic, separating themselves from the rest of Bosnia. The different territories voted on whether to go to war. The lands Milosevic had under his thumb voted yes: Serbia, Montenegro, Vojvodina and Kosovo. Croatia, Slovenia and Macedonia voted no.

In spring 1992, the United States finally intervened by extending diplomatic recognition (recognizing a country as a sovereignty (independent nation)) to the Muslim government in Sarajevo in Bosnia. The Saudi Arabians had pushed the Americans to do so.

By summer 1992, villages were on fire; Muslims fled. There were detention camps. The Serbs were like Nazis. There had been torture and executions. Student protesters blamed Milosevic for the Siege of Sarajevo. In November 1994, a show-trial was held to judge war criminals. Milosevic’s government controlled the media. The idea of a Greater Serbia was dead in the face of diplomatic recognition of Croatia and Bosnia by the United States, Germany and other European nations. Disaffected nationals held secret meetings planning to overthrow the Serbian dictator. There was palace intrigue.

In late May 1992, the UN imposed a total economic embargo against Yugoslavia. Milosevic used the sanctions as an excuse to say the Serbs were a victim of worldwide conspiracy. From 1991 to January 1993, the Yugoslav citizen’s average monthly salary fell 97%. In a scheme of appearing to be conciliatory, Milosevic got an American business leader of Slavic origin appointed as prime minister. Against the Serb dictator’s secret wishes, the new prime minister wanted to democratize, Westernize and unite Yugoslavia, give it capitalism, and recognize the different nations’ sovereignties. But he knew he had to remove Milosevic from office first.

Prime Minister Milan Panic proposed that Milosevic resign and take a job as a drug company executive in California. Panic got high praise from Yugoslavians. The Serb dictator was hated. Even the media criticized Milosevic. However, the U.S. State Department did not support Panic because the UN sanctions were a delicate matter that the U.S. said needed to be discussed through the UN. Panic wanted the sanctions lifted. The U.S. didn’t want to get involved in the war in Bosnia. Panic pressured Milosevic to resign but he refused. “Panic was in charge of the federal police and secret police but Milosevic controlled the Serb police.”

In October 1992 the Serb police took over the building of the federal police. Panic, fearing civil war, attempted to get the conflict resolved through political rather than military means. His cowardliness prompted the American government to throw its support behind Milosevic. A little later, Panic was a candidate in the Yugoslav presidential election. He lost because Milosevic rigged the election. Shocking.

The Serb dictator’s wife Mira wrote libelous columns in the newspaper. In summer 1994, desperate to hold onto his power, Milosevic attacked the Bosnian Serbs in a propaganda campaign; he had used them to acquire his power just five years earlier.

By 1995, the Serb economy had recovered from a steep currency devaluation of the dinar and its conversion to the Deutschmark imposed in 1993 by Milosevic. The dictator’s wife had welcomed large financial contributions from the newly rich, corrupt businessmen who manipulated the closed Yugoslav market. The state-run media made her book on economics a best seller in 1994. In 1995, she was elected to Russia’s Academy of Sciences. This was as much of a joke as Yasser Arafat’s winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

Read the book to learn what happened in the rest of the 1990’s. Or this blogger could just tell you: more of same. And a boatload of refugees.

This blogger skimmed the book “Law Man” by Shon Hopwood published in 2012. In this personal account, Hopwood details his actions as a bank robber, and their consequences, complete with the romantic subplot.

In May 1999, the author was permanently placed in prison in Peoria. He felt relief because “Mostly I wanted my hard time to begin so it would start to end.” He told the reader of the term “chester”– short for “child molester.” Luckily, early on, Hopwood found an inmate who became his mentor, who taught him how to fashion a wooden-handled steel rod; the best weapon in the prison– which housed a metal fabrication plant. “… you can run it straight through a man’s liver. But what’s better is a lot of friends.”

More than three quarters of the prisoners were wannabe rap stars. Hopwood wrote, “You must have a job in prison; it’s not supposed to be a vacation, after all.” Postage stamps were the major means of exchange. Whenever the post office raised the price of stamps, the prison economy was disrupted.

On one occasion there was a gang brawl in the exercise yard involving attempted murder, resulting in a four-day lockdown of the entire prison. “In a world of attention-craving narcissists, lockdowns border on cruel and unusual punishment.”

Read the book to learn how the author was responsible for a change in a major legal ruling, an occurrence whose odds were akin to winning the lottery.

The Book of the Week is “Looking For Transwonderland, Travels in Nigeria” by Noo Saro-Wiwa, published in 2012. This ebook’s author spent most of her childhood in England.

Born in mid-1970’s Nigeria– under the rule of a ruthless dictatorship– she was visiting the country for a few months in 2011 to find her roots. Corrupted by oil discovered in 1957, and a colony of the British Empire until 1960, the country has since become somewhat democratized. The author briefly discusses the history of Nigeria and its tribes, the Hausas, Igbos, Yorubas, Ogonis and Binis. Roughly half the citizens are Muslim, mostly living in the north; the other half are evangelical Christian. Many are Pentecostal, living in the south.

The author recounts her experiences of seeing her aunt in Lagos. Her aunt believes in witches, and many Nigerians believe in the supernatural. They also engage in daily public prayer. Saro-Wiwa met her cousin Mabel, a typical Nigerian 20-something who, every day, arrives at her journalism job in late morning due as much to anger and resentment at the nation’s greedy leaders, as due to a long, stressful commute. She gets paid irregularly, every several months; she’s in debt until then.

“A lack of professionalism characterises the top echelons of government, and extends down to the ordinary workers… [Including museum managers]. Nothing works, talent goes to waste, and nepotism is rife.” Approximately six of ten residents of Nigerian cities work “off the books” in the building trade, or selling small-ticket items and food. Water and electricity are considered luxuries. Infrastructure is hardly ever maintained. Instead of verbal mudslinging and spying on each other, to scare their enemies– Nigerian politicians employ cults to abduct foreign oil workers. Networking with militant groups is more likely to lead to a job than a university degree. Besides, due to lack of funding, “Lecturers were reduced to photocopying literature and selling it to students.”

Saro-Wiwa talks to people around the country. One told her about how a friend had died when a fire and explosion resulted from thieves’ punching a hole in an oil pipeline to get at the precious resource. That was not an isolated incident, as, unfortunately, cigarettes and paraffin lamps are items commonly present near Nigerian oil pipelines, which can heat up to about 900 degrees Celsius during a conflagration.

“Nothing in Lagos comes without a struggle or a squabble…” In one illustration, the author makes the quick-to-anger passengers of public transportation– along with the occasional evangelist and beggar riding overcrowded buses– sound worse than passengers in New York City. The disputes over trivial matters of perceived injustices do not usually come to blows, though. The author takes a number of hair-raising rides on motorbikes, too, minus the social entertainment. There are only a handful of traffic lights in Nigeria, but numerous Darwin-award-candidate pedestrians and drivers.

Read the book to learn more about the author’s observations of wealthy students on a college campus, her visits to Transwonderland and various other tourist attractions and a music concert in rural areas, Nollywood, the sorry state of her accommodations, Nigeria’s carnivorous, gerontocratic inclinations, and her other adventures.

This blogger skimmed “Radio Congo” by Ben Rawlence, published in 2012. It is an autobiographical account of a 2007 trip to still-dangerous regions of the Congo adversely affected by the the country’s four recent wars– in 1964, 1977, 1996 and 2002; the second of which saw eight national armies and twelve armed groups fighting. The author resented having to hand over his “…precious francs to the insatiable Congolese bureaucracy” to interview, among many others, the non-refugees– people who stayed put during the violence.

Two major causes of all that strife is that 90% of the world’s mineral deposits are in the Congo– making it ripe for exploitation, and the fact that various regional ethnic groups hate each other.

Other bad situations the author heard about included: the spewing of lava on Goma in 2002, the demand for higher bribe amounts among local court judges due to economic recovery, and the fact that the incidence of rape in eastern Congo was the highest in the world. There were protection monies paid to soldiers by ten to fifteen thousand miners (in the amount of about $10,000 daily), and by poachers of antelope (whose meat was cheaper than goats’). Animal-park rangers also collected from the latter.

It behooved the local thugs to continue the hostilities. “Peace would mean the unwelcome attention of the government, the advent of commercial mining operations, taxation and the end of their private income… The usual tools of wartime– men and guns– are the deciding factor in most business arrangements and the colonel has the most in the region.”

The author spoke with all walks of life during his travels via hired vehicles and boats. “Each of these towns is a little island community unto itself, with its own radio, market and military command.” In Bujumbura, he encountered Americans whose U.S. government contract called for training the Burundian military. When Rawlence told people his main goal was to visit Manono, they thought he had a death wish. On the way, he ate chili, goat stew and tea in Walikale before he was told to leave, as foreigners were banned from that area. He was shoved onto an airplane loaded with tin ore to be smuggled back to Goma.

“Often the best way to solve a difficult problem in Congo is to get drunk.” The author went to a night club whose door sign proclaimed the wearing of vests, sandals and guns to be banned. In Magunga, the author was obligated by his hosts to attend Christian mass on Sunday morning, as all villagers did. It was a multilingual service; in Swahili, Kibembe and Kinyamulenge. The music ranged from drum and choir to car-battery powered electric piano.

Read the book to learn about the lives of the numerous refugees from Congo’s neighbors and about a boatload of other distasteful circumstances to which the author became privy– glutton for emotional trauma that he was.

The Book of the Week is “Work Is My Play” by Wallace E. Johnson, published in 1973. This is the career memoir of a lifelong workaholic.

The author discusses his passion for doing business. In the 1950’s, he co-founded Holiday Inn on the concept of offering an affordable place for families to stay while they were on a road trip, with accommodations and dining that were superior to those of Howard Johnson’s (no relation to the author), the only other option at the time.

The author fondly describes the opportunistic personality of one of his business partners with a memorable anecdote. The partner grabbed his wife before she had finished her lunchtime pie (she was used to that) in order to punctually attend a government auction of land parcels in an undeveloped area. He then proceeded to win the bid on every single parcel because he knew real estate prices would rise in the long term.

Read the book to learn how the author had fun working nonstop and making lots of money.

The Book of the Week is “The Outsider” by Jimmy Connors, published in 2013. This is the autobiography of the American tennis Hall of Famer.

Born in 1952, Connors grew up in Illinois. His mother and grandmother were instrumental in turning him on to tennis. He started playing in junior tournaments at twelve. However, at that time, there was no money in tennis, so he played to try to get a scholarship to college. That turned out to be a moot point, as his grades were poor, partly due to an undiagnosed learning disability.

Connors was left-handed, and a two-handed-backhand player. Like John McEnroe, he was a hothead on the court and launched profanity-laced tirades when he thought the line judges were making bad calls. He became an “outsider” when he hired a litigious, greedy manager who shook up the then-professional tennis organizations of the early 1970’s.

Read the book to learn about the people who influenced his personal and professional life, and the people who shaped his generation of tennis players.

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About Me

Sally loves brain candy and hopes you do, too. Because the Internet needs another book blog.

My Book

This is the front and back of my book, "The Education and Deconstruction of Mr. Bloomberg, How the Mayor’s Education and Real Estate Development Policies Affected New Yorkers 2002-2009 Inclusive," available at Google's ebookstore Amazon.comand Barnes & Noble among other online stores.